Rob Carr/Getty ImagesWashington Nationals third base coach and Newark native Bo Porter shaking hands with Nationals player Ian Desmond as Desmond comes home after hitting a home run. Porter has been named the new manager of the Houston Astros.

Giants trod the earth in them olden times, kids. We’re talking some time back at the dawn of humanity, basically. It was when you could say the words “Newark” and “baseball” in the same sentence and not elicit a chuckle, or draw some sideways looks like the one from the old RCA Victor dog.

But seriously, folks: Once upon a time, the Newark Bears were considered the greatest minor-league franchise in the country (during its Yankees affiliation), the Eagles of the Negro League boasted of icons such as Larry Doby and Monte Irvin, and Ruppert Stadium was a baseball shrine.

“That is a history that nobody knows about,” said Bo Porter, the new skipper of the Houston Astros, and as such the first major-league baseball manager this city has ever produced. “And it goes sadly unnoticed today because so much has happened in the city since those days. I’d like to see what I can do to change that.”

Here’s our first warning about this guy: Don’t doubt anything he says he can do.

Of course, the 40-year-old baseball lifer is a little busy this week. He spent more than three hours on the phone Thursday as part of a planning meeting with his new owner and general manager, he’s helping Davey Johnson get the Nationals ready for a playoff series that begins Sunday, and much of his free time is spent pondering the men and the city that helped deliver him to his major-league destiny.

He’s from the South Ward — specifically 14th Street, between Madison and Avon — and Porter knew he was destined for this for as long as he can remember, or right around the time a Little League coach named James Miller took his team to Yankee Stadium for the first time in the early ’80s.

“I think I was 10, and it was absolutely eye-opening, from batting practice to final pitch,” Porter recalled in a phone chat Thursday. “At that moment I said to myself, ‘I want to do this.’ And by 12, I was already on a traveling team.”

It was a team organized by that greatest of Newark institutions, Project Pride, and it took Porter from San Juan to Guatemala. It wasn’t complicated: The Newark kids would blow into town, Porter would throw a one-hitter, future Barringer star Albert Maldonado would throw a one-hitter and two-hitter, and they’d all leave with a trophy.

The guy who put those teams together was Joe DiVincenzo, long before he was Essex County executive, and he recalls spotting a winner at first glance: “Even at 12, Bo was a leader,” DiVincenzo said. “You could see it just by the way he dressed to take the field. He was like a professional. To this day, everything has to be just right.”

Porter was named the captain of those teams by Bill Hicks, who would later coach him at Weequahic. Today he calls it “the greatest jump-start a kid could have, because of the confidence Joe and coach Hicks gave me.” He’s always been lucky with coaches. Porter idolized Hayden Fry and Duane Banks, the guys who coached him in football and baseball at Iowa. He kept Fredi Gonzalez and Jim Riggleman as friends, after coaching under them in Florida and Washington.

And now Johnson says this, as Washington prepares for its biggest baseball moment since 1933: “I hate to lose him. He’s a big part of our success here, and he’s a really good baseball man.”

The Astros GM, Jeff Luhnow, uses words like “charismatic,” and “intuitive” to describe his first-time manager. They’ll need more than magnetism and instinct, of course: Houston is the first team in 47 years to have consecutive seasons of 106 or more losses, and now it moves into the American League.

But there was only one man for this job, which is why Houston had to steal the Nats’ third-base coach with the 2012 season still in full vigor. And Porter, a finalist for other jobs in recent years — at Florida and Washington — doesn’t flinch at the burden.

“I’m passionate about the game, and the people who play it,” he said. “And I can use my energy and leadership skill to teach these kids, so the plan is to grow in phases, through the draft and through player development.”

He knows about development. Anyone who got out of the South Ward in the ’80s to play in the majors (1999-2001) is an expert. And Porter, married with a son in preschool, believes he is ready to use his stature to adopt an entirely new set of responsibilities, which include revitalizing Newark’s baseball legacy.

“He is the perfect model now,” DiVincenzo said. “That’s what I told Bo the other day: I said, ‘It’s not about you anymore — you have to think about the kids in the urban centers of this county.’ He gets it. He knows anything is possible when kids get an opportunity, and he can be the leader in getting that message across.”

“I actually pray that is possible,” Porter agreed. “I will do anything I can to help the city of Newark, because my roots are there, and baseball has taken a dive over the years. But it’s a great game, and I know what it can do for kids, so it’s something I’d like to see it thrive. We need to bring it back.”